The Mahayana U-turn

The shift from Hinayana to Mahayana is no small deal. I imagine the monks and nuns two thousand years ago transforming into these new beings after years of insight meditation, and discovering that the goal is not to reach nirvana, but to embrace samsara! With the shift into Mahayana comes a u-turn in the seat of consciousness. The entire story changes. Whereas before you were rooted in the world and heading towards heaven, now you are rooted in heaven diving head first into the world! Eros flips into Agape, and “the eyes through which I see God are the same eyes through which God sees me.” Nietzsche’s, "If you look long enough into the void the void begins to look back through you, " has a bizarrely psychoactive meaning in this regard.

But all of that takes place in the spaciousness of already accomplished Emptiness, where nothing is “happening” or “not happening” at all. It is repeatedly mentioned that “enlightenment” is simultaneously an evolving process of liberation, a gradual unfolding of integration, and an always already Now condition of reality: Sheer Emptiness/Luminous Form. It’s paradoxical.

Radiance permeates every corner of the cosmos--the interior cosmos, exterior cosmos, individual cosmos, and collective cosmos. In a sense, every face of reality is a mirror reflecting the source, which in Buddhism is called Infinite Light and Infinite Life. These two symbols of Reality, Light and Life, are depicted in Buddhist art as two beings completely naked in mad, sexual embrace. Light and Life appear to the mind as wisdom and compassion, (freedom and fullness, eros and agape), and to the body as ecstasy and pain. With the Mahayana turn, souls delight in the opportunity to dive deeply into the center of life, incarnate a body, embody a mind, and touch the infinite amount of beings interpenetrating one’s multidimensional matrix existence. Experiencing actual wisdom and compassion, by experiencing actual pain and suffering, effortlessly generates an impulse to be a bodhisattva: to be born, to live, and to stay alive and in love for as long as space endures. The bodhisattva vow reverberates as the desire and drive of the universe, and is also seen as already fully fulfilled because you already took human form! You already decided to stay on earth! Here you are! Now enter and love in lucidity.

Buddha: “Your job is to discover your world, and then give yourself to it.”